Joyce Glasser reviews Paddington in Peru (November 8, 2024), Cert PG, 106 mins.
Paddington in Peru, based on the iconic Paddington Bear by Michael Bond, is surely the most anticipated animated film of the year. The nearly faultless Paddington (2014) and Paddington 2 (2017) are so universally loved that everyone has been waiting for the follow up. But from the fist gag at a photo machine you get this sinking feeling that the impossible has happened. Paddington in Peru is a dud.
The prologue is a brief origins story, showing us how Paddington (brilliantly voiced by Ben Wishaw), trying to grab an orange off a tree in the Peruvian jungle, ends up in the rapids below and is eventually saved by Aunt Lucy (voiced by Imelda Staunton). Later in the film we learn the significance of the orange and even meet Paddington’s family before he got lost.
Aunt Lucy tells Paddington that if he ever gets lost again he should roar, and she will answer. In this film he gets the opportunity to do just that but it never feels like a monumental home coming, perhaps because home is London.
Fast forward to the Brown’s house, current day London, where Paddington receives his passport, making him a British citizen – and anticipating the overseas trip that the Brown family will be going on. Mrs Brown (Emily Mortimer) is suffering from early Empty Nest Syndrome because Judy (Madeleine Harris) is going off to University while Jonathan (Samuel Joslin) is busy with his hitherto useless inventions. Mr Brown (Hugh Bonneville), who works in insurance, has a morale problem too.
At work, his female boss – a completely undeveloped character – is not impressed with risk averse Mr Brown and his bad case of arachnophobia. She lets him know that she values staff who are adventurous thrill seekers. This ridiculous scene has no other purpose than to anticipate and reward Mr Brown’s Peruvian transformation.
Then Paddington receives a strange (but not to the Brown’s) message from the Reverend Mother (Olivia Colman) of a Christian home for retired bears in Peru. Paddington reads that Aunt Lucy misses him and hints that a visit would cheer her up. Without investigating, the Browns decide a trip to Peru would do the family, if not the environment, some good. For some unknown reason they bring along the housekeeper, Mrs Bird (Julie Walters, here superfluous).
Once the family arrive at the retired bear home, Olivia Colman’s odd Mother Superior provides a few chuckles, that have been absent from the film so far. But the story becomes increasingly implausible, and with an implausible premise – a talking bear with a British passport and human family – that’s not a good thing.
Aunt Lucy has gone missing, and at Mother Superior’s suggestion, the Browns go off to the jungle to find her at a remote location called Rumi Rock. The only person who will, albeit with an ulterior motive, take them there is jungle boat owner/navigator Hunter Cabot (Antonio Banderas) and his first mate and daughter Gina (Carla Tous).
The overly familiar adventure story is – it has to be said – boring, full of mumbo jumbo about bracelets and hidden treasure. But this isn’t a romantic, clever and suspenseful survival story like The African Queen, nor is it a fun and exciting action-adventure yarn like Treasure Island or Raiders of the Lost Ark, although these and a few more films spring to mind. In Raiders, you may recall, archaeologist Indiana Jones recovers a Golden Idol from a booby-trapped Peruvian temple. Something similar is going on here although it turns out to be anticlimactic.
Just what went wrong is anyone’s guess, but it might have to do with handing the direction over to first-time feature director Dougal Williams, best known for music videos and commercials, notably John Lewis’s Christmas averts. Paul King, who directed and co-wrote the first two films, is absent save for a group story credit.
That said, Williams doesn’t have much help from the script, written by a trio of writers (including Paul Lamont who wrote the Paddington Meets the Queen sketch for the Platinum Jubilee). They seem to misunderstand why audiences took the guileless, refugee bear, separated from his mother and left to starve in a train station, to heart.
It might be a mistake, too, to test the audience’s suspension of disbelief when you have a cute little bear with hat, mac and wellies, assimilated into a London family, by returning him to the jungle with wild bears, even if they don’t seem wild. The mystery was more appealing than the reality.
But the real problem is that Paddington, who normally solves problems, investigates on his own and makes bad situations better (e.g. the prison canteen) is more annoying and needy than sweet. His platitudes are unbecoming, too.
Once in Peru, the family have nothing to do but sit around like the clueless tourists they are while their boat crashes. Okay, Jonathan steps up to the plate with an invention when it’s needed, but it happens so quickly – you wonder where he got the materials – that it hardly registers. And why doesn’t nerdy Jonathan strike up a romance with the Captain’s daughter Gina, or Judy practise her language skills speaking Spanish to Cabot (with some funny errors perhaps)?
Then there’s the cast. It wouldn’t be that bad that, with no explanation, Paddington and his adoptive siblings have a new mother if they found someone as funny-zany as Sally Hawkins. Emily Mortimer just isn’t it. And while Olivia Colman hams up her role as the new villain, Antonio Banderas, who can be both funny and scary isn’t either here. What’s more, his gold-hunting ancestors whose ghosts appear when you least want them, are more tedious than humourous.
But it is the glaring absence of Hugh Grant (who does not get out of prison on good behaviour for this film), that highlights how important he is to the series.
